08-07-2012, 11:36 AM
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Hall Of Famer
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Brooklyn NY
Posts: 5,261
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Sanchez Showing Improvement
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It’s no secret New York has had a love-hate relationship with Mark Sanchez since he first arrived in 2009. His first two seasons were showered with playoff appearances that left the team teasingly close to fulfilling Rex’s Super Bowl guarantees. The first true test of adversity came last season and as the team limped to the end there were some vocal fans and analysts who devoted their time to making it known Sanchez deserved walking papers.
As odd as it may seem, last year was probably the best thing that could have happened to the team. First and foremost it allowed Rex and the front office to re-evaluate their processes and analyze what went wrong and how to correct it. It also allowed Rex to bring in the personnel on offense he felt best fit his philosophy instead of forcing Brian Schottenheimer to fit in when he quite clearly did not.
More importantly, it forced Mark Sanchez to re-examine himself as a quarterback however, he needed a bit of help from the one man who knows how he operates the best, one of the scapegoats of last season’s fallout, Matt Cavanaugh. With his future in doubt Cavanaugh had what could have been a final conversation with Sanchez which was: “I might be here, I might not be here, just don’t forget you’re judged on footwork, decision and throw.”
Three simple words.
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When Sanchez returned for the start of the offseason program, he and Cavanaugh — retained by new coordinator Tony Sparano — broke down every dropback from the past two seasons, analyzing his footwork. There was some good, some bad. Obviously, it was bad at the end of last season, when he threw seven interceptions over the final three games.
Footwork is vital for quarterback play. Everything on offense is timed — the quarterback’s dropback and the receivers’ routes — and if the quarterback takes a seven-step drop on a pass play that calls for only five steps, the entire play is out of whack.
So they studied it. And drilled it, literally taking it step by step.
“It’s so technical,” Sanchez said. “Once you get those reads and concepts down, it should look like a teaching tape to Cav. It’s an intense deal. It takes a lot of work on his part, so you know he’s not getting a lot of sleep.”
[...]
Proper footwork is easy when the pass rush isn’t “live” — i.e. the scrimmage. The trick is maintaining the fundamentals when you’re getting hammered, play after play, which is what happened to Sanchez at the end of last season. It was chuck and duck.
It’s only natural to get antsy in the face of an intense rush, but Sanchez said, “You have to be supernatural.” He used a military analogy, saying you can’t deviate from the plan no matter how the circumstances change.
“You have to be robotic,” he said.
Cavanaugh is a tough grader. He believes every pass play should be evaluated in three stages — the footwork, the decision and the actual throw. One “minus” grade can ruin a play.
To improve, the key is repetition, which is why the quarterbacks begin every practice with bag drills, an agility test that simulates movement in the pocket. They also use soft baseball bats to help with ball security — a drop-back drill in which the quarterback gets whacked with foam bats. The idea, of course, is to force him to keep two hands on the ball.
[...]
There was a moment in the scrimmage when all the hours in the classroom, all the drill work on the practice field, reaped a dividend. Under pressure, Sanchez slid to his left to buy an extra second, knowing exactly where his No. 3 read would be. He found running back Bilal Powell for a 5-yard touchdown pass.
Sparano liked that play.
“It’s still early in the process,” he said, “but I’ve seen the improvements with Mark.”
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We have to keep in perspective that it’s only August and the real test will come on September 9th. That said, the fact he has shown improvement and the coaches seem to agree that his footwork has eclipsed past performances cannot be understated especially if he can carry it over to the regular season on a consistent basis.
Sanchez has always been receptive to improvement but this offseason he’s seems to have gone above and beyond past tactics while taking on a greater leadership role for reasons we can likely debate for hours on end. Regardless it’s a step in the right direction and I’m certainly looking forward to watching this team on Sundays.
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by Weeks
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